Most motorists probably don't know that they've been giving a free ride to a silent passenger who's secretly recording their driving habits. Or that lawyers, police and insurers might someday want that passenger to provide evidence. 

 The nosy passenger is an event data recorder (EDR), a cigarette pack-size device similar to "black boxes" on airplanes. More than 70 million vehicles, including two-thirds of cars made since 2004, carry EDRs. They track speed, seat-belt use, steering, braking and other data in the seconds before and after a crash.

On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered automakers to standardize the data collected by EDRs and to disclose their presence in owner's manuals. The new rule, however, won't take effect until the 2011 model year.

NHTSA says the automakers need time to make the devices more uniform. Maybe so. But there's no good reason the notification requirement couldn't kick in now. Drivers have every right to know the recorders are in their cars.

They also have reason to know who has access to the data. Today, that depends on where they live. Ten states have passed laws requiring that automakers notify new car buyers that the boxes are present, and several states prohibit the download of data without the owner's permission or a court order. Court rulings vary about whether police can tap EDRs or whether insurers can use them to raise premiums or deny claims.

There are no national rules. NHTSA, which prodded manufacturers to install the boxes so it could research accident causes, says it lacks authority to impose privacy standards. But the agency's practices offer a useful model that Congress could translate into law. NHTSA examines hundreds of EDRs a year, but only with the vehicle owner's consent. That's the right approach. Since EDRs are becoming standard equipment, the device and its data should belong to car buyers, just as they own the muffler or tires.

Data from the recorders can help researchers and manufacturers design safer vehicles and roads. Those are worthy goals. But without better safeguards, EDRs can too easily be used to play "gotcha" with unsuspecting drivers.

So is it possible that Iran will flex its nuclear muscles on that date? Joining us now is FOX News military analyst Colonel David Hunt.

And, Colonel Hunt, do you place any significance on that date? Do we believe that Iran will take action based on the date, August 22nd?

COL. DAVID HUNT, FOX NEWS MILITARY ANALYST: I think Iran, Alan, has taken action for years. They've taken it with Hezbollah against Israel, they've taken it against us everyday. They've killed Americans in Iraq. So, yes, I take everything that wing nut says very seriously, whether it's the 22nd — but we've been at this World War III for a long, long time. It's time that the rest of us woke up. So high alert, I'm afraid, is going to be here for a while, and this war we're in with terrorists, like the nation — like Iran, is here to stay.

COLMES: I keep hearing this inflamed rhetoric, like World War III. When you say that, it implies as though the United States somehow has to be involved in a ground or air war when you say World War III. Are you suggesting that the United States is just weeks or months away from being a participant in a world war?

HUNT: I think we have been. I'm not talking about attacking all the nations of the world, Al. I am saying this: The War on Terror is a world war. It involves nations all other the world, like Syria, and Iran. It involves the Russian mafia, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah. It's a different type of war. It doesn't mean we have to invade all these countries. We've got a lot more killing of bad guys to do and a lot more recognition of what this about, holy war, in countries sponsoring terrorism.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Hey, Colonel, welcome back to the program. It's amazing to me how many people don't understand the nature of Islamic fascism and how widespread this movement is and how they want to destroy Israel, Europe and the United States.

The Iranians we now discovered today — from the capture of one of the people responsible for the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, Iranian trained — we now know Iran is supplying the weaponry to Hezbollah. So this really — they're using Hezbollah as a proxy for them to wage their own war, isn't that true?

HUNT: Yes, and they're also running Hamas. They're the ones — there's $100 million a year going into Hezbollah out of Iran. Iran, as we know, are killing American soldiers in Iraq, and they're controlling a militia. They're controlling Muqtada al-Sadr there. So they have very bad guys, and they're doing it by proxy. You're right, Hezbollah is just one of their main armies, and they're well trained and well financed.

HANNITY: How naive is this notion — The New York Times editorial today — that the idea that we can talk to Syria, talk to these terrorist regimes. Can you talk to Ahmadinejad? Can you talk to an Assad? Can you talk to Usama bin Laden? Can you get anywhere? Is that an...

HUNT: I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them. The only reason to talk to some of these guys is to just do that. However, we're not going to wipe out, as we talked offline, the entire country, but we have to directly talk to these guys to find out what they want. If they're not going to cooperate, yes, they have to go.

HANNITY: Regime change.

HUNT: Absolutely, 100 percent.  

________

  So what's your opinion on the situation in Iran?

This is an exerpt from an article I found on the Vanity Fair website by Michael Bronner about the military reaction to the events of 9-11.  The complete article can be found at  http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01

08:37:58P.A.: Major Nasypany, you're needed in ops pronto. P.A.: Major Nasypany, you're needed in ops pronto.[Recorded phone line:]SERGEANT MCCAIN: Northeast Air Defense Sector, Sergeant McCain, can I help you?SERGEANT KELLY: Yeah, Sergeant Kelly from Otis, how you doing today?SERGEANT MCCAIN: Yeah, go ahead.SERGEANT KELLY: The—I'm gettin' reports from my TRACON [local civilian air traffic] that there might be a possible hijacking.SERGEANT MCCAIN: I was just hearing the same thing. We're workin' it right now.SERGEANT KELLY: O.K., thanks.

"When they told me there was a hijack, my first reaction was 'Somebody started the exercise early,'" Nasypany later told me. The day's exercise was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a "traditional" simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum. "I actually said out loud, 'The hijack's not supposed to be for another hour,'" Nasypany recalled. (The fact that there was an exercise planned for the same day as the attack factors into several conspiracy theories, though the 9/11 commission dismisses this as coincidence. After plodding through dozens of hours of recordings, so do I.)

On tape, one hears as Nasypany, following standard hijack protocol, prepares to launch two fighters from Otis Air National Guard Base, on Cape Cod, to look for American 11, which is now off course and headed south. He orders his Weapons Team—the group on the ops floor that controls the fighters—to put the Otis planes on "battle stations." This means that at the air base the designated "alert" pilots—two in this case—are jolted into action by a piercing "battle horn." They run to their jets, climb up, strap in, and do everything they need to do to get ready to fly short of starting the engines.

Meanwhile, the communications team at NEADS—the ID techs Dooley, Rountree, and Watson—are trying to find out, as fast as possible, everything they can about the hijacked plane: the airline, the flight number, the tail number (to help fighter pilots identify it in the air), its flight plan, the number of passengers ("souls on board" in military parlance), and, most important, where it is, so Nasypany can launch the fighters. All the ID section knows is that the plane is American Airlines, Flight No. 11, Boston to Los Angeles, currently somewhere north of John F. Kennedy International Airport—the point of reference used by civilian controllers.  ID tech Watson places a call to the management desk at Boston Center, which first alerted NEADS to the hijack, and gets distressing news.

08:39:58WATSON: It's the inbound to J.F.K.?BOSTON CENTER: We—we don't know.WATSON: You don't know where he is at all?BOSTON CENTER: He's being hijacked. The pilot's having a hard time talking to the—I mean, we don't know. We don't know where he's goin'. He's heading towards Kennedy. He's—like I said, he's like 35 miles north of Kennedy now at 367 knots. We have no idea where he's goin' or what his intentions are.WATSON: If you could please give us a call and let us know—you know any information, that'd be great.BOSTON CENTER: Okay. Right now, I guess we're trying to work on—I guess there's been some threats in the cockpit. The pilot—WATSON: There's been what?! I'm sorry.UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Threat to the … ?BOSTON CENTER: We'll call you right back as soon as we know more info.

Dooley is standing over Watson, shouting whatever pertinent information she hears to Nasypany, who's now in position in the center of the floor.

08:40:36DOOLEY: O.K., he said threat to the cockpit!

This last bit ratchets the tension in the room up considerably.

At Otis Air National Guard Base, the pilots are in their jets, straining at the reins. ("When the horn goes off, it definitely gets your heart," F-15 pilot Major Dan Nash later told me, thumping his chest with his hand.) But at NEADS, Nasypany's "tracker techs" in the Surveillance section still can't find American 11 on their scopes. As it turns out, this is just as the hijackers intended.

As as member of the Armed Forces who works in a control center along the same lines as the one in this article (although my area of responsibility is not nearly as big as this one)  I can definately say that when you go from normal day-to-day operations to attack mode, there is so much information that becomes "lost in translation."  After reading the complete article (and ignoring Vanity Fair's usual left-wing bias) I can definitely say that those men and women who were present for duty that dreadful day went above and beyond with the information that they were receiving from the FAA.  It is no small wonder that we didn't shoot down any planes.  One thing the article fails to point out that I've noticed in my experiences as a security controller is that once people get over the initial shock of any situation, their training takes over and they react the best they can giving their level of experience, training and general ____ (I drew a blank here.  What I'm trying to say is that some people just get this job and some don't.) 

What do you guys think?  Read the complete article (found here) and then give your opinion.

PS  About those generals and the inaccurate story they told to the 9-11 commision....that's just your typical military brass covering their own ass.

Here's an op-ed piece that I found on the yahoo website by Linda Chavez.  I liked it and thought I'd share it with everybody:

We are just weeks away from the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and yet we have quickly forgotten the lessons of that terrible day. We understood then that a group of Islamic fanatics had declared war on the United States and that our only option was to defeat them. 

Barely five years later, we seem to have lost our resolve. But our enemies haven't lost theirs, as the interrupted plot to blow up U.S.-bound airplanes in Great Britain demonstrates all too well. So what are the chances we will ultimately prevail?

First, it's important we understand who the enemy is and why they have targeted us. We are not fighting a war on terror, despite the nearly universal shorthand most of us have adopted. The terrorists who flew airplanes into American buildings, blew up hotels and nightclubs killing Western tourists in Bali and Kenya, bombed trains in Spain and England, and sent missiles and suicide bombers into Israel are fighting a religious war.

In their view, we are infidels who must be converted or killed. There is no room in their ideology for peaceful co-existence or detente. And they are willing to sacrifice their own lives -- and, most importantly, the lives of their children -- in order to kill as many of us as possible.

We have never faced an enemy like this before. Even the Soviet Union at its most ruthless was not as pernicious a threat. The Soviets wanted territory and power, but they always acted rationally. Mutual Assured Destruction worked as an effective nuclear deterrent because the Soviets would never have sacrificed their own lives just to kill us.

Imagine how differently the Cold War would have turned out if the Soviets were willing to sacrifice Moscow in order to obliterate New York. But we know that the Islamists are perfectly willing to pile up body after body of fellow Muslims so long as they can maximize the body count of dead Christians and Jews. The difference is that the Soviets wanted their reward here on earth, while Islamic extremists don't expect theirs until they die.

In the face of this deadly purpose, we in the West seem totally ill equipped for battle. Rather than single-mindedly tracking down those who want to kill us, we worry that we might be infringing on their civil liberties. When we do take action, as Israel did in attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon, we become paralyzed with remorse when innocent bystanders die, as they do in every war.

Yet our enemies think nothing of strapping explosives onto the chests of their own women and children in order to kill us. How many times have we heard the mothers of suicide bombers praise their children's martyrdom and boast of those they sent to the grave, while we shed tears at the loss of innocent life?

This is an asymmetrical war not because we have more sophisticated weapons and they have only crude methods with which to fight, but because the moral constraints are so lopsided. Can you envision Hezbollah expressing regret and sorrow if one of their rockets had hit an Israeli target killing two dozen women and children, as Israel did when its bombs killed 28 (not the 54 originally reported) in Qana, Lebanon? We cannot, and should not, adopt their perverted morality, but we should recognize the imbalance for what it is.

Unless we learn to see our enemies for who they are, we cannot hope to win this war. We've got to stop treating our own government as the enemy. We have to quit worrying about whether the rest of the world will love us when we take actions to protect ourselves. We have to give up the illusion that if we just retreat from the world or abandon Israel the Islamist fanatics will leave us alone.

We must recognize that it took most of a century to defeat communism and it may take much longer to vanquish Islamofascism. Our best hope for victory may well be that radical Islam, like the Soviet Union, will begin to collapse from within.

So what does everybody think?